BORIS YELTSIN CATALYST FOR THE COLD WAR END

ID# : 3159
Under Category : Personality Biographies
Source: media.hoover.org

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that it is Mikhail Gorbachev, not Boris Yeltsin, whom the Russian . Soloviev and Elena Klepikova, Boris Yeltsin: A Political Biography (London: .

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Tolstoy’s War and Peace illustrates how personalities can influence the course of history. This is especially true if one happens to be in the right place at the right time. 1 Michael McFaul demonstrates this point using the example of Boris Yeltsin and his fight against communism. ButYeltsin appears to be a much less convincing example of McFaul’ssecond point: the importance of ideas. In my opinion, it would be presumptuous to say that Boris Yel- tsin was an advocate of ‘‘liberal, pro-Western values.’’ The universallesson Michael McFaul draws from ‘‘Yeltsin’s role in destroyingcommunism and ending the cold war’’ 2 seems quite ambiguous, es- pecially in light of what the author himself says: ‘‘The slow paceby which Western leaders engaged Yeltsin as a potential ally sug-gests that Yeltsin’s own actions made him suspect as a democraticrevolutionary. Yeltsin’s spotty record as a democratic promoter inthe post-Soviet era suggests that his acceptance or understandingof these liberal ideas was not complete.

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